Components having MEMS elements have been manufactured in mass production for many years for greatly varying applications, for example, in the field of automotive technology and consumer electronics. The miniaturization of the components is increasingly gaining significance. On the one hand, the miniaturization substantially contributes to reducing the manufacturing costs of the components and therefore also the terminal equipment. On the other hand, in particular in the field of consumer electronics, more and more functions—and therefore components—are to be accommodated in terminal equipment, while the terminal equipment itself becomes smaller and smaller. Therefore, less and less space is available for the individual components on the application printed circuit boards.
Various miniaturization concepts for sensor components are known from practice, which provide an integration of the micromechanical sensor function and the circuitry-wise processing and analysis of the sensor signals in one component. In addition to the lateral integration of the MEMS function and the ASIC function on a shared chip, there are also already concepts for so-called vertical hybrid integration, according to which a chip stack is formed from ASIC, MEMS, and a cap wafer.
Such a vertically integrated component and a method for the manufacture thereof are described in US 2011/0049652 A1. The known method provides bonding the starting substrate for the MEMS element on an already processed ASIC substrate. A micromechanical structure, which includes at least one deflectable structural element, is only produced in the MEMS substrate thereafter. Independently thereof, a cap wafer is structured and prepared for the mounting above the micromechanical structure of the MEMS substrate and on the ASIC substrate. The cap wafer thus processed is bonded, after the structuring of the MEMS substrate, on the ASIC substrate, so that the micromechanical structure is enclosed in a hermetically sealed way between the ASIC substrate and the cap wafer.
The component described in US 2011/0049652 A1 is equipped with a capacitor system which—depending on the MEMS function—may be used for activating, i.e., moving the deflectable structure element, or may also be used for detecting externally caused deflections of the structural element. For this purpose, the capacitor system includes at least one deflectable electrode, which is located here on the deflectable structural element of the MEMS element, and stationary electrodes, which are implemented here in a structured metal layer on the surface of the ASIC substrate.
The known component concept allows cost-effective mass production of robust components having a micromechanical function and a signal processing circuit, since here not only the individual component parts—MEMS element, cap, and ASIC—are manufactured in the wafer composite, but rather also their mounting to form one component is implemented on the wafer level. The MEMS functions and the ASIC functions may be tested on the wafer level, and even the calibration of the individual components may take place on the wafer level before the separation. In addition, the known components require a comparatively small mounting surface because of the stacked construction, which has a favorable effect on the manufacturing costs of the terminal equipment.